Hopkins, Sir Michael

Hopkins, Sir Michael (1935– ). English architect, he worked with N. Foster before setting up a practice with his wife, Patricia (Patty) (1942– ), in 1976. Their own house in Hampstead, London (1976), was designed with a steel frame, much glass, and two walls of corrugated metal, classified as a High Tech building. The extension to Greene King Brewery, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk (1977–83), followed. They invented the Patera System for industrialized building, and examples were realized in the early 1980s at Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs., and Canary Wharf, London, and their own offices at Broadley Terrace, St Marylebone, London (1982–5), were erected using a variant of this system. Among later works may be cited the Schlumberger Research Laboratories, Cambridge (1982–5); the Mound Stand, Lord's Cricket Ground, London (1984–7—with load-bearing arches, mild-steel seating areas, and tent-like roof); the Solid State Logic Development and Production Building, Begbroke, Oxon. (1986–8); major alterations to Sir Albert Richardson's Bracken House, City of London (1987–92— retaining parts of the older building and slotting in a new structure); Offices and Residential building, Shad Thames, London (1987–91); the David Mellor Cutlery Factory, Hathersage, Derbys., (1987–9); the new Opera House, Glyndebourne, Sussex (1988–94); the Inland Revenue Buildings, Nottingham (1992–4); the Parliamentary Building, opposite the Palace of Westminster (1989–99); the GEK-Terna Building, Athens, Greece (2001–4); and the business park at Bedfont Lakes, near Heathrow, including the central building. More recently the firm completed (2004) a new refectory running almost the whole length of the south side of the cloister at Norwich Cathedral, retaining what remained of medieval walls: however, some opine that the buildings for the Wellcome Trust, Euston Road and Gower Street, London (2002–5), perhaps do little for the townscape of the area.

Bibliography

C. Davies (1988, 1993);
C. Davies et al. (2001);
Kalman (1994)